Guild Wars 2

My guild had a roleplay event last night. We kept it off of the main PvE path, deciding to have it at Podaga steading. We were really out of sight, but it didn’t stop us from getting trolled so hard.

We had people getting naked and dancing in the middle of our event, cussing at us in say, engineers lighting off their fire weapons, and a rogue making us all invisible. We had spam waving, spam sitting, and then just overwhelming spam in emotes. This went on, by the same people, for over an hour. We ignored/blocked the mean spirited people, and reported them when they actually broke Anet policy (the spamming and the cursing), but nothing helped us -in the moment- and ended up ruining the night for about fifteen people.

This type of thing never happened to us before Megaservers. It also doesn’t help that the ‘block/ignore’ feature doesn’t work fully, making it all the more difficult to continue on with our brand of fun despite those who would grief us.

As a guild leader, I’m seeing my community slowly slip away as frustrations mount with the Megaservers. Nights like last night only serve to drive more people away with less of an interest in returning. I’m worried, and I’m losing faith in Anet with their considerable silence and half-broken tools given as some sort of solution.

Trueflight.9058:

….You’re already beginning to bleed players. With ESO’s emergence, WoW’s ever-present lure and countless other MMOs, the RP community that you’ve allowed to fracture is drifting in separate directions.

I can attest to this as a guild leader of a medium sized roleplay guild. At ESO’s launch, we put up a forum topic asking how many people were going to play the new game, and we only had one person reply that they would be leaving. With the Megaserver introduction, that number has jumped up to about 35% of our guild, with more talking about giving it a try. Everyone realizes ESO has the Megaserver system as well, but people seem more open to the utilities it has in place for it, rather than the cobbled together system Anet has given us.

We’re all mature adults, most of us with families, who game under a budget. I can only imagine that the 60.00 ESO box price, plus the monthly fee, will come out of the ‘Entertainment’ budget, which will mean a loss for GW2 and its gem system. Every single person in my roleplay guild was at least a monthly purchaser of gems. My husband and I bought gems monthly, treating GW2 as if it had a subscription.

Game play is fun, but it’s essentially the community and the friendships you make that generally anchor people to a game. The Megaservers have decimated the community feel, and we’re already seeing people who had no intention to drift off beginning to do just that.

This is my very first post on the forums, and I’ll likely spend it repeating what’s already been said.

I’m a mom who gets a chance to log in and play briefly in the afternoons and then later in the evening when the munchkins are in bed. This makes me a pretty generic casual player, I think.

I enjoy the concept of the Living Story, and there are some places where I’ve seen it done very right. For example, the Frost & Flame chapter was positively wonderful. The story was introduced slowly (a touch too slowly) with comments being made by NPCs and then invasions starting to happen. We saw an influx of refugees come into the Black Citadel and Hoelbrak, and all the realistic problems inherent in such a situation. Where do the refugees live? (You built a camp for them, complete with rats added overtime!) Where do the refugees go? (You moved them to Southson, helping to end one chapter while opening the way for the next). You had NPCs talking, mini-invasions, and a really amazing dungeon. I felt like a crucial part to this story that was living and breathing all around me.

During last year’s Halloween event, I was also impressed by how the Lion’s Arch fountain was destroyed, and then we had to work to rebuild it. This attention to detail is really rather unheard of in MMOs where things magically get destroyed and then replaced in the blink of an eye. I feel invested in that statue now, because I helped to rebuild it. I would like to be invested in more of my environment; helping to make lasting, permanent change to what is around me.

Then— there’s Scarlet. I do feel like the two-week schedule has lessened the quality of story we’re getting for the sake of the quantity. I would much rather read one good book rather than a handful of jotted ideas with barely any detail, little lasting impact, and zero character growth. To be honest, I still cannot wrap my mind around Scarlet being -the- bad guy behind the Molten Alliance, it just doesn’t fit. At all. She’s so comical and over the top, and ends up being what roleplayers call Mary Sue, that she doesn’t have a fan out of anyone that I know.

I’m not a previous GW1 player, so I have only fallen in love with the current GW2 lore. But, I can understand the people who want to see more continuity from the game they played before. I would like to see some continuation of the rich culture, areas, and fiends you have already created.

More depth, more stories cut into chapters (ala Frost & Flame segwaying into Southsun Cove chapter), a variety of bad guys, a more permanent impact, and more environmental or cultural changes.

Maybe the Scarlet story has some overarching theme, beyond how tropey and overpowered Scarlet is, but from Southsun Cove on forward the story ends up feeling totally disjointed. More like random ideas thrown together under a weak scarlet-hued umbrella.

I have taken part in every Living Story chapter, and I like the creativity behind what you are trying to do. I just don’t feel like it’s a cohesive or coherent story, yet, and I’m looking forward to the day when it is.